‘LEGAL IDENTITY FOR ALL’ AND STATELESSNESS:
OPPORTUNITY AND THREAT AT THE JUNCTION OF
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW
BRONWEN MANBY *
This article considers the impact of Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (‘SDGs’),
‘to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration’ on the objective of eradicating
statelessness. This SDG Target has given a significant boost to initiatives for the strengthening of
civil registration and identification systems, supported by the United Nations and World Bank. Yet
its impact on the resolution of statelessness is not clear, because of the immense complexity of the
definition of ‘legal identity’. Proposed definitions, adopted after the target was established, fail to
take on board the challenges involved in cross-border recognition of civil status documents and
the determination of nationality of a child for parents who hold no documents. The article
concludes that SDG Target 16.9 is both an opportunity and a threat. If the objective of providing
universal ‘legal identity’ is to have a positive impact for stateless persons there is a need for new
engagement with the regulation of civil status in private international law, and new insistence in
public international law on legal frameworks that facilitate recognition and registration of the
different elements of a person’s identity, including nationality, even and especially where they are
officially in doubt. Short cuts in this process risk long delays.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Sustainable Development Goals and Legal Identity ...................................... 248
Legal Identity and Birth Registration in International Law .................................. 250
Civil Registration and Conflicts of Law ............................................................... 254
Civil Registration in the UN System .................................................................... 261
Legal Identity, Digital Identity and Development ................................................ 262
The Dangers of Short Cuts: Population Registration and the Creation of
Statelessness.......................................................................................................... 265
Conclusion: Legal Identity, Birth Registration and Statelessness ........................ 267
THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND LEGAL IDENTITY
In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable
Development Goals (‘SDGs’), an ambitious set of objectives for international
development to replace and expand upon the 15-year-old Millennium
Development Goals adopted in 2000. Goal 16 is one of the broadest: ‘Promote
peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to
justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all
levels’. Each Goal has a set of more detailed targets: Target 16.9 requires that
*
Senior Policy Fellow and Guest Teacher MSc Human Rights, London School of Economics
and Political Science. Thanks to Jaap van der Straaten, Kirsten di Martino, Alenka Prvinšek
Persoglio, Christoph Sperfeldt, René de Groot, David de Groot and Aashish Yadav for
comments on a draft of this paper, as well as the two anonymous reviewers. This article is
twinned with another in which the broader implications of the ‘legal identity’ target are
discussed: Bronwen Manby, ‘The Sustainable Development Goals and “Legal Identity for
All”: “First, Do No Harm”’ (2021) World Development (forthcoming).